This year’s Software Analysts Insight (#swgai) event was interesting
and valuable. It provided an opportunity to interact directly with key senior
executives to discuss key IBM strategies, tactics and plans for 2014. Here are our observations on things of
particular interest to us.
First, Steve Mills is well on his way to achieving his
goal of selling IBM solutions with less focus on individual products. He anticipated
the market shift away from products per se (which is accelerating) to the
demand for solutions that address major enterprise challenges resulting from
rapidly evolving technology, changing markets, accelerating change, etc. He
confirmed IBM’s unequivocal, sole focus
on addressing enterprise needs. It is not now, nor will it be, a
consumer-focused company. There will be no ‘high concept’ store-barges floating
in San Francisco Bay (or anywhere else) from IBM. Success depends upon IBM’s ability
to anticipate enterprise demands and adapt tactics, products and messaging to
fit. Their focus is on how to help their clients be successful in the markets
they choose to pursue.
Second, IBM and the clients it serves must be more customer-focused and
-responsive than ever. Big Data and
Analytics both drive and address this move as they combine to provide customers
and enterprise with informed insight to make better choices and decisions. This
spurs continuous market evolution with an explosion of opportunities. As enterprises
find themselves operating in a state of perpetual transformation, IT must provide
the platform for speedy and agile response. Enterprises must balance
optimization (of existing infrastructure and processes) with innovation (investment
to change operations, functions and delivery) if they are to be successful.
Third, Cloud
computing begins in the infrastructure and extends across business
functions, including service delivery. Properly implemented, it provides a
consistent, reliable and scalable pillar underpinning enterprise success. To
truly leverage the abilities of the cloud, access to services (infrastructure,
platform, software, services, etc.) must not be vendor specific. Therefore, IBM
fully committed to standards-based
implementations. Initially as one of the first to promote and fund
multi-vendor standardization efforts, such as Open Stack, TOSCA, etc., next by building
standards-based solutions based on
published APIs.
IBM is one of the largest Software as a Service (SaaS) providers to the enterprise today. They
believe that SaaS is becoming the dominant way enterprises will purchase and
deliver new products and services. Adding to its existing 100+ SaaS offerings, IBM
will expand to include their full portfolio. Other paths to the market will be
maintained, but SaaS is a major part of IBM’s future.
Fourth, Watson has
come a long way from its game-playing days. Today, Watson is defining the market
for cognitive computing. Mike
Rhodin, SVP, acknowledges these are very early days for the technology.
However, its influence is already felt as it introduces big changes in the
fields of Healthcare (instruction,
diagnosis, billing, treatment planning), Client
Engagement (service centers, guiding purchase decisions), Financial Services (product selection)
and Industry (travel, retail,
healthcare). Watson’s unique capabilities, including a natural-language
interface that provides human-like interaction, its ability to generate and
evaluate hypotheses and its ability to adapt and learn from user selection and
response – have just begun to be exploited. Mike described how Watson can
create questions to ask itself to learn more effectively. It can recognize
conflicts or inconsistencies in its input data. It will then attempt to
restructure what it ‘knows’ to remove the conflicts. Efforts to speed commercialization include
building a Watson Ecosystem[1]
by providing access to Watson to IBM partners, ISVs, researchers, etc.
Fifth, IBM believes that the customer experience is and will continue to be a critical influence
in sales and marketing. They also believe that today’s UI experiences, even on
the latest mobile devices and smartphones, leave much to be desired in terms of
style, imagination, utility and attractiveness. Necessary improvements extend
far beyond creative dashboards. IBM will change that by including design to create an exceptional user
experience as part of its development process. To that end, an IBM Design Center was built in Austin,
Texas, and is being populated by 100’s of newly hired designers from leading Design
and Art schools. These are creative arts graduates, not engineers or computer
science majors who will be placed next to and work with product teams
throughout IBM. IBM executives as well as employees are attending classes in
creative design at the center.
IBM presents a clear, consistent message about identifying
and providing solutions to, when and where the market demands. They provide
convincing evidence that they and their customers benefit. The have a unique,
insightful vision which is significantly different from feature/function
obsessed competitors. Of course, vision alone does not translate to sales. The
message still has to reach the operations and implementing staff.
Future blogs will continue the discussion including how the
Cloud and Smarter Infrastructure team is designing portals to improve service
delivery, simplify interaction and enhance the user experience. We will see how
they plan to complement IBM’s end-to-end messaging.